Research Reports and Zine
Introduction
On this page you'll find links to research reports and a zine.
Following the workshops in May 2022, we collated material and analysed data to produce the following outputs:
- In our methods report we explain our approach to using workshops and creative interactive stations to explore benefit administration experiences. We talk though issues such as ethics and practicalities, alongside detailing four different stations: photo interviewing, benefit mapping, postcards to the powerful, and a graffiti wall.
- In this report we draw on the data from the workshops and combine with interview data with Universal Credit recipients to focus on 'Scottish Choices' (devolved powers that can alter the delivery of Universal Credit).
Further reports to follow shortly.
ZINE
Below is an online version of our zine, created by artist Jean McEwan. Jean worked at the 'Postcards to the Powerful' station throughout the workshops, helping attendees create postcard collages.
We've brought them together here in one zine alongside photos, insights, and quotes from the four stations.
(It's best if you expand the zine using the 'two arrow' button at the bottom right. If you want a printed version of the zine posting to you, please email hayley.bennett@ed.ac.uk)
ACADEMIC JOURNAL ARTICLES (OPEN ACCESS)
ABSTRACT: Greater conceptual and empirical engagement with welfare state complexity is needed in studies of digital welfare. This article explores how existing concepts such as welfare systems, subsidiarisation, rescaling and fragmentation can advance our understanding of claimants' digital welfare experiences. Focussing on the United Kingdom—well-known for its digital welfare approach to Universal Credit—the article demonstrates the need for scholars to look beyond single digital reforms. It draws on empirical data from the Navigating Digital Welfare project to explore experiences of digital welfare from the perspective of claimants in multi-level welfare systems who engage with multiple ‘modes of digitalisation’ and competing digitally mediated citizen–state relations. The research finds that multi-level welfare creates a complex and unsettling digital welfare experience for individuals who can access multiple types of social security and engage with multiple unpredictable interfaces, possess limited understanding of the links between different agencies and data sharing and experience frequent difficulties accessing human contacts. This context has the potential to create heightened inequalities due to multiple administrative burdens which can lead to underclaiming, misinformation or an inability to access services.